And she pressed on, looking for shade and rest.
But soon she stopped, with a little cry, and they both stood looking in astonishment at the strange and lovely thing upon which they had stumbled unawares.
'I know!' cried Lucy. 'The woman at the convent tried to tell me—and I couldn't understand. She said we must see the "Sassetto"—that it was a wonder—and all the strangers thought so. And it is a wonder! And so cool!'
Down from the very brow of the hill, in an age before man was born, the giant force of some primeval convulsion had flung a lava torrent of molten rock to the bed of the Paglia. And there still was the torrent—a rock-stream composed of huge blocks of basalt—flowing in one vast steep fall, a couple of hundred yards wide, through the forest from top to bottom of the hill.
And very grim and stern would that rock-river have been but for Italy, and the powers of the Italian soil. But the forest and its lovely undergrowths, its heaths and creepers, its ferns and periwinkles, its lichen and mosses had thrown themselves on the frozen lava, had decked and softened its wild shapes, had reared oaks and pines amid the clefts of basalt, and planted all the crannies below with lighter, featherier green, till in the dim forest light all that had once been terror had softened into grace, and Nature herself had turned her freak to poetry.
And throughout the 'Sassetto' there reigned a peculiar and delicious coolness—the blended breath of mountain and forest. The smooth path that Eleanor and Lucy had been following wound in and out among the strange rock-masses, bearing the signs of having been made at great cost and difficulty. Soon, also, benches of grey stone began to mark the course of it at frequent intervals.
'We must live here!' cried Lucy in enchantment. 'Let me spread the shawl for you—there!—just in front of that glimpse of the river.'
They had turned a corner of the path. Lucy, whose gaze was fixed upon the blue distance towards Orvieto, heard a hurried word from Eleanor, looked round, and saw Father Benecke just rising from a seat in front.
A shock ran through her. The priest stood hesitating and miserable before them, a hot colour suffusing his hollow cheeks. Lucy saw that he was no longer in clerical dress. He wore a grey alpaca suit, and a hat of fine Leghorn straw with a broad black ribbon. Both ladies almost feared to speak to him.
Then Lucy ran forward, her cheeks too a bright red, her eyes wet and sparkling. 'How do you do, Father Benecke? You won't remember me, but I was just introduced to you that day at luncheon—don't you remember—on the Aventine?'